Barbaric Genius

Running Time

72 minutes

Photography

Anthony Dalton, Joe Edwards, Ben Richards, Paul Duane

Editor

Colm O'Brien

Status

Delivered

Financiers

IFB, RTE

Producer

Mary Carson, Paul Duane

Director

Paul Duane

This is the story of one remarkable man's journey from street mugger and wino to chess champion and award-winning author, and how a single act of violence brought him crashing down again.
In the early '90s, writer John Healy was everywhere - on TV, in the papers, being interviewed, reviewed, profiled. Then John Healy disappeared.
Stories emerged to full the vacuum, dark stories that kept most from trying to find him. Now, after 16 years, he's about to make a comeback, launched once more on the world stage, with the likes of Irvine Walsh and Daniel Day-Lewis as his cheerleaders. But what happened to derail the most promising literary careers of the early '90s? And what happens to a man who has nothing, then everything, and then nothing again?